Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 3pm
Ogawa Shinsuke's Narita: The Peasants of the Second Fortress
155 Freeman Street, Brooklyn

Narita: The Peasants of the Second Fortress
Ogawa Shinsuke, 16mm, 1971, 143 mins

"In Japan, guerrilla film activity reached high intensity during the war. The use made of Japan as a conduit for Vietnam war supplies generated strong anti-government feelings and many 'protest films'...These were seldom seen in theaters or on television, but reached a substantial audience via 16mm in clubs, unions, and other groups. Ironically, wide distribution of 16mm projectors ('Natco' projectors) by the American occupation after World War II, for reindoctrination purposes, had laid the basis for this rise of a 16mm system. It now saw such films as the powerful Sanrizuka series—three feature-length films. The heavy air traffic through Japan—swollen by the war—had prompted a 1966 decision to build a new international airport for Tokyo. The area chosen, Samrizuka, was occupied by farmers who were determined to block seizure of their lands. For four years the film maker Shinsuke Ogawa documented their struggle, which reached its climax in the third film, The Peasants of the Second Fortress (Daini Toride no Hitobito, 1971). Here we see resistance turning into a pitched battle with riot police as farm women chain themselves to improvised stockades, and students join the struggle for anti-government, anti-war motives. Ogawa, patiently recording the growth of resistance into an Armageddon, achieved an extraordinary social document, and one of the most potent of protest films" - Erik Barnouw